


Therefore She Weaveth Steadily

by InvisibleasMusic



Series: Fairytale Snippets [3]
Category: Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms, The Lady of Shalott - Alfred Lord Tennyson
Genre: Canada's gorgeous, Character Study, Feminist Themes, I'm just sad they didn't take me with them, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, WIP, and has good healthcare, another headcanon, another snippet, author apologizes for rambling in the tags, because I have a lot of thoughts, but no clear direction, hopefully tbc, its the isolation I swear, literacy as magic, my muse escaped in the middle of the night and fled for Canada, no beta we die like men, pity about the moose though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23537209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvisibleasMusic/pseuds/InvisibleasMusic
Summary: The lady of Shalott begins telling her side of the story...
Series: Fairytale Snippets [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693786
Kudos: 2





	Therefore She Weaveth Steadily

**Author's Note:**

> Another take on the Lady of Shalott, with inspiration drawn from many places, but with a special shout out to Lisa Ann Sandell's lyrical verse novel "The Song of the Sparrow", an achingly beautiful retelling of The Lady of Shalott (from the lady's perspective) interwoven with Arthur's rise to power. If you love Arthurian mythology, stories retold from female povs, and/or poetry, I highly recommend it.

“The force of poetry is linked to its ability to get itself remembered, like those bits of song that stick in your mind, you don’t know why”. - Jonathan Cruller, _Why Lyric?_

The tales say that I was weaving, always weaving, turning a mirrored reflection of the world outside my window into...what? Tapestry I suppose, although I rather doubt bards know anything about weaving really, but it makes for a nice, contained, _womanly_ image, doesn’t it? “Idle hands are the devil’s playground” after all, and everyone knows women are ever so much more susceptible to such things, or at least that’s what they say.

The truth of the matter is that I was always weaving, but not the way you think, and certainly not in a way bards would sing about. For you see, I wasn’t weaving cloth. I was weaving words.

You can see now why the tales also call me a fairy lady, for to those who can neither read nor write, it is easy for such activities to seem like magic. Indeed, in some sense it is the truest magic there is, to write down one’s thoughts and feelings and observations and know that fifty years from now, a hundred, a thousand, another living soul might be able to read those words and know those thoughts. At least, it seems magical to me.

I didn’t only write, of course, I would have gone mad, just as the tales say I went mad from my constant weaving...

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
